Those that do the dying on Kosovo

Col. David H. Hackworth, author of "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts," "Price of Honor" and "About Face," saw duty or reported as a sailor, soldier and military correspondent in nearly a dozen wars and conflicts -- from the end of World War II to the fights against international terrorism.

Thirty years ago, President Clinton, National Security Adviser Sandy
Berger and Secretary of Defense William Cohen seldom missed a war
protest
rally. When they were young and vulnerable to the killing fields of
Vietnam, they just happened to be big time anti-war movers and shakers.

Now all three have morphed into high-profile members of the “Bomb ‘em
back
to the Stone Age” club as they strong-arm the Serbs and Kosovars to the
peace table.

In 1972, that’s exactly what Nixon and Kissinger tried and failed to
do in
Vietnam. Remember Linebacker I and II and the bombs falling by the
freight-
train load? Remember how, when the bombing didn’t work, those two hawks
scrambled to settle for “peace with honor”? And how, in the end, there
was
no peace and no honor — and almost 400,000 U.S. casualties?

Unless they’ve lost a screw somewhere, people who fight wars don’t
want
anything to do with war. Those that haven’t, like Sandy and the two
Bills,
are too often hot to trot whether war makes sense or not.

Since none of these born-again war mongers will be risking their own
lives
in the skies over Serbia or in the mud of Kosovo, I thought I’d ask some

real warriors, those who’ll do the dying or have already endured the
insanity of battle, for their thoughts on the Clintonian Solution to
Kosovo.

An infantry sergeant: “They’re amateurs playing with real
bullets. … Good people will get killed again for bad policy.”

A fighter pilot: “Our country is on a collision course with
disaster.
Congress, as usual, is rolling over and ducking their responsibilities.
What ever happened to the War Powers Act?”

A Navy CPO: “The Balkans have been a powder keg for a thousand
years.
If Clinton hadn’t spent the ’60s avoiding war, maybe he would have
learned from the mistakes we made in Vietnam.”

An Army engineer: “Who will tell the mothers and fathers of
those who are killed in action? Bet your boots it won’t be those who
order
us there, but we who wear the uniform, we who bear the scars of battle.”

An Army colonel: “That place is not about freedom and
independence … it’s about hatred that oozes out of blood-caked dirt.
We
have no business sending American troops into that ethnic hornet’s
nest.”

A Navy commander: “We’ll be going against well trained Serbian
forces. Thirty-Two German divisions couldn’t do it ( in World War II ).
When our
boys come home in body bags, what will the war enthusiasts tell the
nation?”

A Vietnam vet: “You can’t occupy an unwilling country, nor
change their hearts and minds with napalm and explosives. Think about
it.
Did the Germans win over France? Did we win over the Vietnamese?”

An Air Force colonel: “Air power won’t hack it over Serbia.
We’ve bombed Iraq for eight years and they’re still standing. And
they’re
pussycats compared to the Serbian tigers.”

An Army sergeant: “We’ve forgotten the main lesson from Vietnam:
Never get involved in another country’s civil war.”

A Special Forces colonel: “Sun Tzu taught: ‘Know your enemy.’ We
failed this lesson in Vietnam and now are repeating the same mistake in
Kosovo.”

A former Army woman soldier: “Sending U.S. troops into Kosovo is a
disaster. Aside from having no business there, we stand to lose much and

gain nothing.”

An Air Force captain: “I don’t mind dying for my country, but I’ll
be
damned if I want to die as part of Clinton’s New World Order.”

A Navy pilot: “It’ll be a slugfest in rotten terrain, with
serial killers much like the Russians faced in Afghanistan. This isn’t a

peace mission, it’s a kamikaze raid!”

An Army major: “Has anyone thought out an exit strategy? Is it
open-ended
like the mess in Bosnia? If it is, then say so up front and level with
the
American people who’ll have to station troops there for decades as we’ve

done in the Sinai.”

Congress should talk to our warriors, past and present. They make a
lot
more sense than all the mumbo jumbo coming out of Washington. Maybe it’s